


Flame and Snow

by imagine0314



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, F/F, Feels, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23644678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagine0314/pseuds/imagine0314
Summary: A collection of drabbles loosely based on NorthernGhost'sThe Rust, part of the seriesThe Devil Lies in the West.------Anukai is a Sobeck clone raised in the Cut with a destiny yet to be revealed. As she travels with Ikrie to discover more about herself, she is joined by a middle-aged Aloy and Talanah and encounters more than her share of danger, bloodshed and heartbreak along the way.
Relationships: Aloy/Talanah Khane Padish, Ikrie/Original Female Character
Comments: 37
Kudos: 19





	1. Before the Rust Sets In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NorthernGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthernGhost/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Rust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23506558) by [NorthernGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthernGhost/pseuds/NorthernGhost). 



A steady beat.

A steady beat is all she asks for. All she knows. All she’s willing to hear. 

Ikrie spent so long rejecting the technology. It was superfluous, something that tapped into a greater realm that, while full of knowledge, was also full of burden she’d rather avoid. 

She’s Banuk. 

Her eyes and ears and breath alone should be enough. Enough to survive. To prevail.

She’s not superstitious enough to believe the Focus cursed, but some days she feels it comes close enough. It led them on the journey south. It led them to this place of endless metal and death. 

And now Anukai’s bleeding out in the infirmary, her tunic still warm and sticky, coated in deep red. The machines are dead, and at least there’s that. It’s enough to know the black skittering shapes with fiery red eyes lie limp and defeated, no longer a threat. 

There are bigger threats, now.

Threats of a softer variety, made of flesh and sinew and strips of torn muscle that hang like thick moss from a vine. The blood that pours forth is so dark, it verges on black. Words like _arterial_ and _shock_ and _replacement_ drift around Ikrie’s head but she doesn’t register any of them. Instead she’s tapping on the Focus that she doesn’t want, that she doesn’t understand how to operate, begging for GAIA to give her the information she needs while Vansa urges her to back away, the woman quickly pulling out devices that look more like they’re for torture than healing.

“Ikrie, you need to leave,” she says, but the dark-haired Banuk remains planted. How can she go anywhere? Where else is there? Anukai is the only home she’s ever known, and if she doesn’t have that, there’s nothing. She seethes, but the voice in her ear soothes and whispers something that finally frees her feet from their stance. 

She blinks and she’s out in the hallway, staring at her boots. How did she get here? She can’t remember getting here. All she can think about is Anukai’s blood. The slick of it against her hands, the heat as it poured from the ragged remains of her arm, the metallic scent of it in her nose, sitting salty and full of iron on the back of her tongue. 

“Please, GAIA,” she hears herself say. What was it she’d asked for?

When she hears it, it’s nothing like she remembers from so many nights together, her head pressed against Anukai’s ribs, the sound deep and low and comforting. Instead the rhythm in her ear is so rapid and faint she practically feels the life draining from the redhead on the other side of the door. 

She knows there’s nothing she can do but listen.

She _listens_ as she finds her way back to her room, avoiding Aloy and Talanah on her way down.

She _listens_ as she strips off her soaked clothes, finally finding a place to bathe and scrub the caked red from her skin. It sticks under her nails, and she’s not sure whether to remove it or leave what could be the last evidence of the redhead with her, buried in her body.

She _listens_ as she wanders the living quarters, rudderless and unable to concentrate until she finds herself standing before a mirror image of her...well, of _Anukai._ Pale and shivering and wrapped in bandages, Ara sits with her arm cradled against her stomach, her flaming locks drooping in front of her face, matted with splattered blood and sweat.

Ikrie stops to look at her with watery eyes. Ara’s hurt, but she’s _alive_ and the dark-haired girl doesn’t know whether she’ll ever see Anukai the same way. She blanches, the sick feeling rising up again.

“I’m not her,” Ara says, hissing against the pain. 

Ikrie’s not sure if she means it as a reassurance or some rueful reminder to herself. She looks down at Ara’s arm. 

“Guess I came in second place,” the redhead says with a rough snicker. “I’ll live. She needed to be seen first.” 

The weak sound in her ear contrasts with the person before her. So much of them is the same. 

Same face. Same eyes. Same mouth. Same heart?

No. Ikrie shakes her head slowly. _Not the same._ It’s not _home._

She mutters something about getting better but she can hear her voice crack from the outside in, hot tears trickling down her cheeks the longer she watches Ara breathe. There’s a look on the redhead’s face she can’t bear to figure out just now, and before she knows it, she’s moving again, feet carrying her back to where she knows she has to be.

Ikrie sits outside the door, knees pulled to her chest. There’s still a dried rust-like stain on the floor a few feet away from where she sits, more of Anukai spilled before her. The voice in her ear has long since gone quiet, knowing the Banuk isn’t listening to anything but the sound her Focus has locked on to, trying through sheer force of will to keep it going. 

She wonders if these quiet, fluttering sounds are the last notes of Anukai’s song.

Her eyes open, heavy and bleary. She doesn’t remember falling asleep in the hallway. Vansa is crouched over her, one hand on her shoulder and it takes a few moments for her mind to understand she’s being spoken to. 

“It’s a waiting game now,” Vansa explains. “I got her on the good stuff, so she’s asleep. It’s for the best.” 

Ikrie asks when she’ll wake. Vansa has no answer for that, but Ara needs her now and she has to go. And so she’s alone again and the sound in her ear is slow and lethargic but at least it’s steady. She carefully pushes on the door, making her way in. She approaches the bed, finding Anukai more pale than usual, a purpled cast to her eyelids. 

She leans in, pressing a chaste kiss to lips drained of their color. Anukai is cold, like those lost to the winters in the Cut. She moves to pull the thin blanket up against the redhead’s chest when she catches sight of something gleaming and gray perfectly aligned with the expanse of pale, freckled skin just above it. Ikrie pulls down the covering to examine the strange addition, her lips pressed into a thin line as she studies it. Her Focus doesn’t outline it the same way it does the rest of Anukai’s flesh and bone body when she realizes it must be some kind of machine in the form of an arm. 

She wonders if she should be repulsed. 

The Banuk raises her hand tentatively, fingertips shaking as she presses them to the cool metal, tracing the edges of it until her palm covers the metallic one beneath. In a way, she’s grateful for it. She’ll take anything over the image of hanging tendrils of skin and bone and the awful pump of hot, thick liquid along the floor. It’s better, but it’s not the same. It never will be.

Anukai will hate it when she wakes up.

If she wakes up.

Ikrie shakes her head. She can’t allow herself to think like that. Besides, doesn’t this mean Anukai has taken the machines into herself like the Great Banukai once did? She has to believe the Blue Light lives in her now, a beacon that will guide her back to life. Back to warmth. Back to _her._

The dark-haired Banuk turns her gaze back to the redhead herself. Anukai doesn’t move. Doesn’t make a sound. Ikrie’s seen the dead before and this is as close as it comes. If it weren’t for the sound in her ear--the one she’s been listening to for hours now--she’d already be in mourning. Hot tears trickle silently, her ability to choke them back long since gone. 

There’s no one here to tell her no. Vansa’s got more important things to attend to and she can still hear the cries of the wounded far in the distance. The girl climbs into the bed next to Anukai’s limp body. She wants to take her usual spot, wants to burrow into the redhead’s body until there’s no delineation between the two, but in this she holds herself back. She doesn’t dare, Anukai’s breath is shallow as it is. 

Instead, she lays there on her side, hands hooked around the redhead’s remaining arm, wearing the Focus she hates just to make sure Anukai doesn’t slip away, the soft, slow thrumming sound pulling at her. 

She wonders, for a moment, what it would be like if they’d never come here on this foolish journey--if they’d have eventually said the same things to each other in the dark of night. If they’d have curled into each other for body heat in the shelter of their tent, fighting against the cold of the Cut. She wonders, silently, if Anukai still would have let her get as close as they are now. Ikrie wants to kiss her, again. Wants to feel the press of her skin. Wants to breathe in the scent of her hair. 

She wants to call Anukai her _mate._

The thought of it sends a shiver down her spine that she hopes the redhead next to her can’t feel, but the sound in her ear remains thready and slow as ever, unchanged. She swallows heavily.

“You’re going to survive this,” Ikrie whispers low. She’s not sure if she’s saying it for Anukai or for them both. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

She can feel the tears falling again, unsure of how they got there or when they started. She’s unsure of a lot of things, but not this. Not Anukai _Never_ Anukai.

Ikrie presses the Focus closer to her ear, as if it will make a difference. As if it will give her the one thing she wants more than anything else. The thing she wants so desperately she would tear it from her own chest and give it to Anukai--give it to her _mate_ \--if she could.

A steady beat.

A steady beat is all she asks for. All she knows. All she’s willing to hear .


	2. Melting Ice

Their shared room is dark and full of shadows.  
  
Anukai lies on her side, away from Ikrie, the redhead tightly coiled around herself. Every inch of her bristles, her intent clear:  
  
 _Don’t touch me_ .

The distance between them, a few feet at best, is more than Ikrie can stand. She’s survived the harsh winters of the Cut, blood and battle and dragging a dying Anukai to safety. That, she can withstand.  
  
She’s Banuk. Survival is in her bones.  
  
But this? The separation is unbearable. Part of her is missing and it lies within Anukai, buried deep in her chest.  
  
She ponders what she’s done wrong. Why she can’t break through whatever this is. Why Anukai, _the woman she wants to call her mate_ has isolated herself away in the thickest, most frozen ice--somewhere even she cannot reach.

The redhead shivers and Ikrie can hear her breath hitch, unsure if she’s asleep or merely pretending to be. She’s kept the dark-haired Banuk at bay since waking, since discovering her arm made of metal. It feels _foreign_ , feels _other_ and how can she let something so _dead_ touch the one person keeping her _alive?_ _  
_ _  
_It feels like sacrilege. Like violation.  
  
And Anukai can’t bear the thought of doing that to Ikrie. Of letting something cold and metallic touch her warmth, touch the soft parts of her revealed by sleep. It’s bad enough that the _thing_ is part of her now, a constant reminder that she _should be dead._  
  
Ikrie had tried to tell her that the Blue Light lived in her now. Like it was something good. Like it was something divine. But what she conveniently left out was the part where the Blue Light burned through the Great Banukai, killing her in the end. 

Sometimes she feels like this _thing_ is burning through her, too.  
  
Vansa says it’s her nerve endings reattaching and re-learning how to interpret the feedback, but so much of what she feels is fiery and violent. It _aches_ constantly and it’s all she can do to maintain her icy composure, her sense of control. 

Nothing about it feels _right_. 

Everything is a dull burn or pins and needles. Hot pressure or a cold slice. Sometimes she thinks she’s losing it, unable to tell what sensations are real or imagined. She’s wondered, idly, whether or not she could tear it off. She might live. Might not. She’s not sure she cares about the outcome right now.  
  
How could she let something that’s infected her mind with such despair _touch_ Ikrie? Something she doesn’t _trust_ not to hurt her? She can barely manage to pick up her bow with it, and the last time she tried to pick up a mug, she cracked it. She doesn’t trust the arm.  
  
She doesn’t trust herself.  
  
Anukai shudders again, trying to let the limb hang as limp as possible so she can pretend she doesn’t feel it. Tries to focus on not moving so she won’t accidentally sense the distant twitch of metallic, gray fingers. She can hear Ikrie breathing behind her.  
  
She wants so, so _badly_ to curl into the other Banuk’s body and just stay there. 

She doesn’t dare.  
  
But Ikrie does.  
  
Anukai’s so lost in thought she doesn’t notice until it’s too late, the heat of the girl’s chest against her back. The redhead tries to struggle away. _Why can’t she see what a monster I am?_ But Ikrie holds her with a surprising strength.  
  
“Shh, Anukai, shh…” the dark-haired girl chokes into her ear. “It’s okay.”  
  
The redhead flinches, trying to wrest her arm away from Ikrie. It can’t touch her. Can’t _hurt_ her.  
  
Ikrie continues to whisper Anukai’s name in the dark, over and over until it becomes a chant. She wants to give in. It would feel _so good_ to give in.  
  
Before she can resist further, Ikrie slowly but surely runs her palm down the length of gray metal that constitutes her arm, her fingertips running along the surface like they would her skin. It’s a strange sensation, and she instinctively jerks away.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Ikrie hisses quickly. “Did I hurt you?”  
  
Anukai shakes her head slowly. “You’re the only thing that hasn’t.”  
  
Ikrie nods and kisses her shoulder before resuming, her hand snaking its way further down the metal surface, her fingers linking with Anukai’s artificial ones. It feels distant and dull but not altogether unfamiliar. There’s a tinge of warmth. Soft pressure. It’s not the _same_ as it was before, but it’s the first thing that’s taken away the ache since she woke. Still, she works hard not to move, unwilling to trust herself to grasp back, too afraid of losing control. 

Ikrie repeats Anukai’s name in soothing repetition, the dark holding them both close. She can feel the redhead’s shoulders shake in silent sobs. She holds the artificial hand tighter, noting that Anukai still keeps it lax.  
  
“I’ve got you,” Ikrie promises, pressing her chest close into Anukai’s spine, their legs twisted together. She’s soft where Anukai is stiff and the redhead wishes she could just breathe her in and never leave.  
  
She feels a tug and Ikrie is rolling her over until they’re chest to chest. Anukai lets it happen. She’s _so, so tired of fighting her_. She never _wants_ to fight Ikrie.  
  
The dark-haired girl gently grabs for her metallic arm and this time Anukai doesn’t pull away.  
  
“You’re not going to hurt me,” Ikrie says in the dark, guiding the robotic palm to her own hip, the flesh bare where her thin sleep shirt has ridden up.  
  
Anukai pauses, feeling the almost-imaginary heat of Ikrie’s skin against the new limb. She refuses to move. What if it’s too hard? Too fast? She won’t be able to forgive herself if she hurts Ikrie.  
  
The dark-haired girl places one hand against Anukai’s ribs, feeling the beat beneath while her other urges the redhead’s metallic fingers further along her skin, just below the hem of her shirt.  
  
“You’re _my_ Anukai,” she whispers breathlessly to drive the point home. _I trust you_.  
  
The redhead tentatively strokes her metallic thumb against Ikrie’s body, the motion taking more concentration than it ever did before--the movements still don’t come easily, but this is the most successful she’s been in days. Anukai lets out a shaky breath she didn’t know she was holding, the heat of Ikrie’s skin becoming a stronger and stronger sensation against her palm. She silently scapes for the courage to press further, the pads of her unnaturally smooth robotic fingers sliding along the planes of the other girl’s belly, beneath the fabric to as high as she dares, listening to Ikrie’s breath quicken.

For a moment, it almost feels like it used to.  
  
Ikrie presses forward, kissing Anukai and feeling the redhead’s lips part--finally, truly, letting her in. When she breaks away, they’re both catching their breath.  
  
“You’re _my_ Anukai,” Ikrie whispers once again. “All of you.” Her thumb rubs across the back of the redhead’s metallic hand for emphasis.

Anukai can feel it. And it doesn’t hurt.

  
  
  



	3. Memory is Heavy (I'll Carry it Forever)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This drabble diverges significantly from The Rust's canon. So if you want to know Aloy's true feelings and relationship to Anukai, go read chapter 3 of The Rust by NorthernGhost.

She knows this feeling. 

She knows it the moment she sees Anukai bleeding out on the floor. She remembers what it was like to see the red and know something was terribly, terribly wrong. 

Aloy holds her breath when Vansa takes her away and pleads to the Goddess that it doesn’t play out the way she knows all too well. The way that nearly destroyed her and Talanah before. 

It’s ridiculous, she thinks, that she’s this devastated--this quickly. After all, she’s seen so much death and destruction in her life. She’s seen so many young and old, friend and foe alike struck down before their time. Why should this be any different? Yet here she is, scrambling to help Ikrie get the girl to a healer, eyes burning with tears.  
  
Anukai isn’t hers, she knows that. 

Still, she’d be lying if she said her breath hadn’t caught her in her throat the moment she laid eyes on the girl in Meridian. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t looked at Talanah and felt both of them break just a little, imagining what could have been--a girl with flaming hair and piercing eyes and skin dotted with freckles like constellations.  
  
Their daughter would have looked _just_ like her.  
  
“She’s in good hands, Aloy,” she hears Vansa say. “Now let me do my job.”  
  
She can feel hands on her shoulders, pulling her back. She’s fighting it, a blinding grief hitting her lungs before she can parse whether she’s mourning the past or the present, the two realities tangling themselves together where she carries the memory forever, deep and hidden from everyone except her wife.  
  
Anukai isn’t hers, she _knows_ that.

And yet here she is, sobbing into Talanah’s chest just like she did twenty years ago, the dark-haired Carja guiding her through a maze of hallways blurred by tears until suddenly they’re back in their shared room.  
  
“I did this,” Aloy says, voice small and distant. “I couldn’t keep her safe.”  
  
“Aloy, look at me,” Talanah insists. “This _isn’t_ your fault.”  
  
“I couldn’t keep _either_ of them safe,” the redhead laments, and Talanah says nothing, knowing all too well how Aloy has never forgiven herself. The dark-haired woman curls protectively around the redhead, letting Aloy’s head nestle into her shoulder. Talanah doesn’t like to think about what they lost, but she knows Aloy can’t help it, now.

Aloy leans into her wife, unable to fight against the hollowness that threatens to collapse her entirely, unable to get the image of the girl who looks _so much_ like her out of her mind. She’s _so_ young, so much possibility laid before her, and it makes the older redhead want to vomit at the notion that it all might be cut short.  
  
Anukai _isn’t_ hers, she knows that.  
  
Aloy remembers the look on Talanah’s face when she told her, the mix of unbridled joy and uncertainty creeping into her features, the two of them crying happily at the notion of this tiny whisper of potential residing inside her.  
  
Her fingers clutch at her wife’s arms as she recalls what it was like, knowing that for once, she wasn’t dealing so freely in death. Something good and innocent and _hopeful_ was going to come from her. Finally, she was going to give Talanah something other than another battle, other than another threat. She’d reveled in every change as she counted the weeks, every ounce of fatigue, every time her wife had placed her palm low on her belly and spoke of a future that was yet to come.  
  
All she’d had to do was protect their daughter.  
  
All she’d had to do was protect Anukai.  
  
Aloy isn’t sure when she finally quiets in Talanah’s embrace, losing track of time. Have they been in this room minutes, or hours? Has it been a day? No one’s come to tell them anything, and she can only brace for the worst, her entire body tense and aching. 

Like it did once. Like it does again. 

Ikrie wants nothing to do with them and she doesn’t blame the girl. She doesn’t want anything to do with herself, either.  
  
The redhead tries to rest against Talanah’s ribs, the Carja whispering words of reassurance despite the darkening circles under her eyes but Aloy can’t help but think of the blood that pumped from Anukai’s arm, hot and sticky and dark. She’d been sure of herself, thinking that with every breath and beat of her heart that her aim would strike faster, strike truer than whatever the skittering black machine could have conjured up. She was certain that she’d be enough. That she could protect the girl from anything.  
  
She’d thought that then, too.  
  
There had been a calm and confidence as the weeks wore on that with every breath and every heartbeat she was growing something that filled her with awe--with _possibility_ . The feeling had rushed out of her in an instant when she saw the blood, dark and heavy. She’d screamed for her wife, begging for help, begging for it to stop. Talanah had called for the healers, but Aloy had known. Known in a way Talanah never could. She felt it beginning already--the cold grip of death that crawled through her insides while the life bled out of her, the one that had carved her out and left her empty in more ways than one.  
  
Anukai isn’t _hers_ , she knows that.

And still, held in Talanah’s strong grip, the Carja carding her fingers through her still mostly-red hair, she’s left with the same sense of emptiness now as then. But Aloy feels Talanah hug around her waist and bury her face in her hair and she knows her wife is reliving the same guilt, the same powerlessness as she did all those decades ago.  
  
Somehow, they sleep.  
  
Days and nights bleed into one another. The girl isn’t dead. She _isn’t_ dead and Aloy has to take the solace where she can. Their routine becomes a pattern: waking and waiting and breathing and sleeping. The two of them visit the girl’s bedside whenever they can, avoiding Ikrie’s icy gaze. Vansa tells them it’s just a matter of time. She’ll wake up. Or she won’t. 

She looks so fragile like this, so broken.  
  
So much like what could have been.  
  
Talanah squeezes her hand while they both sit near the girl’s still form. Aloy’s chest is tight and everything hurts, but it would be wrong to say this pain is new. She knows, Goddess, she _knows_ , she’s been holding this for twenty years.  
  
And just like she carried _her_ then, she’ll carry it forever.

The news comes late, long after they’ve retired to their shared room where they both struggle to sleep, disheveled and exhausted and worn. 

The girl is _awake_. Anukai is _alive_. 

Those words alone cause something fiery and full of life to bloom in Aloy’s chest. Before she can stop it, the tears flow freely and she hugs Talanah so tightly she might break them both. She doesn’t have to explain herself to her wife. She knows all too well what it means for them both. This time is _different_ . This time, there are no haunted _what-ifs_ , there is only a life to be lived.  
  
Anukai isn’t hers, she knows that.  
  
But she’ll spend the rest of her days making sure Anukai’s _possibilities_ are endless.


	4. Words Left Unsaid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A companion piece to [Who Will Save the Savior?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23922730/chapters/57526021)

Talanah knows the moment she feels the cold side of the empty bed that something is deeply, terribly wrong. She knew it the moment GAIA had shouted into her ear, commanding her to wake, dread pulsing thick in her throat while her heart pounds so hard she can feel her body shake. And despite knowing Aloy could die, knowing she might _already be dead,_ there's only one thought running through her head.

_"She didn't tell me."_

It's the thought that haunts her as she rides up the mountain. It's the thought that chokes her as she nearly throws Aloy's limp body over the side of her strider. It's the thought that burns her as she drags her wife into the infirmary and begins to strip her down, and scrub her skin raw, decontaminating every inch of her.

The radiation is severe, that much is certain. That much, GAIA _knows._ It's enough that the sick, creeping feeling in Talanah's gut sneaks up on her, the one that tells her Aloy knew exactly how much danger she was in. That she knew the odds were stacked against her. That she knew she would likely die in the attempt.

_"She didn't tell me."_

Talanah can't breathe, and it has little to do with the stench of the iodine solution she's forcing past Aloy's lips. Every inch of her wants to yell, to rage, to swear, to fight. She wants to scream at Aloy for leaving the bed they've shared for eight years in the middle of the night. For leaving _her._ For leaving their future behind. Hadn't they just been talking about what they might want soon? It already felt like a different life and Aloy had willingly tossed it all aside to be the hero again.

Like she always did.

Like she always would.

She wants to pound her fists against Aloy's chest and ask her why. Why did it have to be her? Why didn't she say anything?

Why wasn't she worth staying for?

_"She didn't tell me."_

But now she looks at the barely breathing form under the sheet on the bed against the wall and the fire consuming her from the inside out vanishes, suffocated into ash she can taste.  
  
She tries to reach out and touch Aloy, only to be warned by GAIA that she can't. She can't touch the woman she's fallen asleep holding for thousands of warm Meridian nights. She can't touch the woman whose skin she's memorized every inch of. She can't touch the woman whose eyes she gets lost in and whose hair reminds her of sunset. _  
_

Maybe she'll never touch Aloy again.

And now GAIA's telling her she's stalling, that she doesn't have a cure for this, not just yet, and Talanah tries to resist the urge to retch in the bucket meant for Aloy. Her anger flares again, at both the machine woman and her dying wife and as soon as it happens, guilt surges alongside. GAIA's _trying._ She knows this. She knows how GAIA considers Aloy, even if they never quite say it out loud. GAIA _made_ her, and now she's watching that creation become _unmade_. Still, Talanah is _angry._

Her anger isn't fair.  
  
How can she be so furious with Aloy when she's dying in front of her? Aloy is like this. She's always like this. But still, Talanah had held out hope that when it came down to it, to life and death, Aloy would choose _her_ over being the martyr. But that isn't who her wife is. She is always saving the world. Always saving everyone but herself.

Talanah understands the choice. She hates it.

_"She didn't tell me."_

There's a horrible churn in her insides that tells her nothing will be the same after this; she's staggering backward as GAIA appears in the doorway, hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. She leans her forehead into the mechanical body, seeking comfort from something the toes the line between the living and dead.  
  
Aloy lies behind her, doing the same. It makes her want to lash out, to tear and strike at the facsimile of a body holding her. GAIA would let her, she imagines, and that's exactly why she doesn't. Instead she tries to find the words, something to break the silence. Her lips move without sound and she stops and stutters, sobs wracking her body and causing her shoulders to shake in the machine woman's embrace.  
  
"What is it, child?"  
  
Finally, Talanah swallows hard, her voice cracking, speaking the words that have been beating against the inside of her chest since she woke:  
  
"She didn't tell me."


	5. Stay (Keep Me Here)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A companion piece to [Who Will Save the Savior? Chapter 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23922730/chapters/57780808#workskin)

It hurts.

Everything hurts.

_"I love you."_

The redhead's eyes creak open with more effort than slaying machines requires. Everything is raw and painful. Her skin still burns and her bones ache and her insides feel sick and unsure. She contemplates vomiting but can't bring herself to do so, can't bring herself to exert the energy necessary to expel what she knows is little more than acid and water, and she doesn't think she can bear to move.

She can't bear to leave Talanah's arms.

Her own grip is weak and her body is frail in a way it's never been. Aloy has always been strength and flame and stubborn perseverance. Now, she's cold to the touch, a half dead ghost laying in this bed, undeserving of the woman whose face is buried in her throat and hair.

Talanah's lips are still pressing to the pulse in her neck, even in sleep, and one of her palms lays against the center of the redhead's chest. Aloy knows.

She did this to herself.

She did this to Talanah.

_"I love you."_

She knows how the dark-haired woman always waits to hear it, always pauses just long enough that Aloy wonders whether she really expects to hear it back. She'd passed out the night before whispering it over and over and over again, but she's gone and done this.

And it cannot be undone, no matter how effective GAIA's cure.

It will always be a blight, always prove that when it came down to it, she made the _wrong_ choice.

She'd tried her best to die for the right cause. For Meridian. For the sub-functions. For Elisabet. For GAIA.

She just hadn't realized she could die for Talanah, instead.

A long, drawn out death that would take decades to wring her final breath out of her. A death that would include getting up every morning and sleeping every night, a death that would include sunsets and sunrises and stolen kisses and lustful glances and watching day by day as the two of them died together just a little bit more with every year's passing and the graying of their hair.

She hadn't realized dying for Talanah meant living for her first.

_"I love you."_

And now she wonders whether Talanah will ever say it to her again. If she will ever wait to hear it from the redhead's own lips, if she'll ever believe the words again. Tears prick at Aloy's eyes with the realization.

She'll say it endlessly, she swears. She'll repeat it until it becomes prayer, until it binds them together again, one painful suture at a time, forever repairing the wound she's inflicted while trying to be a dead woman dying over and over again. Like it was fated. Like it was inevitable.

Even if that dead woman had begged her not to and known it wouldn't make a difference. Of course she had. Of course she would. They were made the same in that way. Maybe she blames that part on her mother.

Her what?

Aloy swallows thickly, trying not to wake Talanah with the shake of near-silent sobs. She deserves better than this. Better than her _goddamn bullshit._

Where did that--?

Talanah deserves better than her _fucking suicidal_ need to fix everything. To be the hero, even if it killed her. She deserves better than an empty bed after eight years. She deserves better than me being no good at endings, at letting things end.

You and me both, kiddo. She deserves better than what we did to her.

_"I love you."_

Do you mean it?

Of course, how could I--?

Then you'll have to prove it. Over and over and over for the rest of our lives. We chose this instead of her.

It _wasn't_ a choice.

There's always someone else if it came down to it. We both know that. I knew it the first time, too.

How could we ask--?

We couldn't. So we didn't. But that doesn't change things. She is never going to forget that no matter how much she might love us, we didn't choose her above everything else. I was always like this. We? Doesn't matter. It was always the bigger picture and never the woman in front of me. I've made this mistake too many times for you to repeat it.

Talanah stirs against her shoulder, maybe she's awake. Maybe she's not, Aloy can't quite tell. Her hand presses harder into the redhead's chest--

You feel that?

Yes.

She's _trying_ to keep us here, kiddo, even after everything we did.

Aloy can feel the tears running down her cheeks again, the same as they did the night prior. Talanah's grip against her ribcage aches, and she's not sure if it's from her injuries or something else entirely. All she knows is that they _both_ feel it.

A lesser woman would have let us die like we wanted.

I didn't want to die. I wanted to save--

You and I both know that's only half true.

The redhead feels Talanah nose further into her throat. She has to be awake now. And what will morning bring? She shudders and the dark-haired woman leans into her further, not realizing it isn't the chill that's bothering her.

_"I love you."_

She wants to say it. She wants to let it fill her lungs. She wants to drown in it. She wants to make it a promise.

So make it. Don't fuck this up. Most people don't get a second chance, I should know. And if we're not dead, I don't want to live without her. Do you?  
  
No. No I can't. I can't. I don't want to be alone again. I love her.

We love her.

Aloy leans over and kisses the top of Talanah's head, her inky black of her hair spilling across both of their bodies.  
  
It hurts.  
  
Everything hurts.  
  
But Talanah at her side is the only thing that doesn't. 

She feels the Carja stir against her.   
  
"Hey," she slurs, deep purpled rings beneath puffy eyes, her voice still thick from crying a few hours prior. 

"Hey," Aloy croaks, her voice raspy and thin.  
  
"You're here," Talanah says, sounding relieved. "I kept waking up all night, afraid you'd...I just...I needed to make sure you were still--that it had worked and--"  
  
"Not going anywhere," the redhead whispers. "Not unless you want me to."  
  
"Please don't," Talanah begs, her voice quiet and raw. "Shadow take you, Aloy, never again, you hear me?"  
  
"We're-I'm sorry."  
  
"I don't want to hear that. You know what I want."

Aloy breathes her in, deep and slow.  
  
"I love you," the redhead says. Is _she_ saying it? Are they _both_ saying it?

She decides it doesn't matter.

"I love you. I love you. I love you."  
  
They can both repeat it for the rest of their lives.


	6. Reflections

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Aloy gets older, she realizes she's looking more and more like Elisabet did, both the one from a thousand years ago, and the one that nearly killed her and Talanah at the end of Northern Ghost's [Singularity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19815091/chapters/52303798#workskin).

She's been feeling it more and more as the years creep by, as forty had come and gone and so had a few years since. 

She has finally caught up with herself.

It's in the small details: the creases forming near her eyes, the laugh lines catching light and shadow near her mouth, the silver slowly overtaking the red at her temples, tendrils streaking through her wild mane of hair. It's in the muscle of her jaw and the arc of her throat and the freckles on her shoulders from too much time in the sun. She sees it in the slope of her breasts and the planes of her core that have since softened with age. 

This is a body she knows all too well, even though she's inhabiting it for the first--second?--time. She's known what it is to live here and for a few years still. She knows what it is to watch herself _change_. It wouldn't be the first time.

The woman behind her eyes and the one in the mirror now match.

There are moments it feels comforting, when she catches a particular glance that reminds her of _before_ , or an expression that reminds her of _her_ \--their?--mother, the one she'll never truly lay claim to. Still, she can see the echoes of Sobeck women going back generations and that, at least, gives her some reassurance that she's in the good company of her ancestral dead. 

It lets her avoid the deep discomfort, the worry that she's becoming the version of herself she _fears_ more than anything else. The version that tried to kill her and her mate, the version with all her worst qualities condensed into being. The version that felt nothing but cold, hard, calculation at the notion of billions of deaths. The version that would have spilled _so much blood_ just to improve her vision. The version she's still not sure is anything other than _part of her_ , even if it was made manifest.

Even when she's pushed the fear down, and swept the thoughts away, she's still confronted with a truth too uncomfortable to ignore:

She wears the face of a dead woman. 

Talanah straddles her hips, her boots and tunic and pouches tossed to the floor along with the redhead's own, only her leggings remaining. She presses kiss-swollen lips against Aloy's own, their bodies beginning to move in a well-practiced dance. She could disappear like this, Aloy thinks, trying to ignore the niggling feeling in the pit of her stomach. She could let Talanah consume her with heat and light, and that would make everything all right. She tilts into the Carja, eager for more so she doesn't have to let her thoughts run wild.

"Tal," Aloy breathes and it sounds like she's pleading. Her voice is more raw than she'd like to admit and she knows Talanah can hear there's something more stirring beneath her flushed and heated skin. They both know what she's asking for and why she needs it.   
  
"Here, let me get these," Talanah offers, breaking another kiss and urging the redhead to sit up so she can pull Aloy's leggings off.   
  
Aloy obeys, letting the Carja remove the last of her clothes and that's when she sees it.

 _That_ face.  
  
Her face.

Caught in the reflection of the mirror across the room. Her heart was pounding before but now it's for entirely different reasons, her flesh going cold as a chill hits her. Aloy's entire body goes rigid at the sight. Her eyes remain locked with themselves, pupils blown wide, no longer dark with _want_ but instead with fear and shame. _This_ is the face she shows to the woman she loves most. Talanah has keen eyes, she has to _see_ it. Has to know. Has to somehow stomach intimacy with a person who now looks exactly the one that tried to kill them both. Has to feel hands that struck her gliding across the curves of her body. Has to see eyes gazing up from beneath her that once looked at her with such contempt. She doesn't know how the Carja has done it without complaint.  
  
"Aloy."  
  
This isn't what she wants to be for Talanah.  
  
"Aloy."

A killer. A dead woman. Neither option sits quite right. How can Talanah make love to either?

"Aloy, where did you go?" Talanah asks, her hands are bracing the redhead's shoulders while Aloy now sits with her knees tucked to her chin, her face buried in her hands. Shame and fear stab like a hot poker through her insides. Her face is hot but the Carja's hands still burn hotter, the only anchors she has right now.  
  
"Talk to me," Talanah urges, her voice barely above a whisper. She waits a moment. Then two.  
  
"How can you stand this?" Aloy finally asks, her voice muffled through her hands.  
  
"Aloy, look at me."  
  
Another moment passes before the redhead has the courage to raise her face, only to find Talanah's kind, honey-brown eyes looking back at her.

"Stand? You say it like what we're doing is some _obligation_. It's not."  
  
"But...how can you--when you see _this_?" Aloy refutes, gesturing toward her face. 

Talanah frowns. She knows. Of course she knows. She sees it every time Aloy's face goes stony in a mirror, when she finds another strand of silver mixing its way in. The last few years it seems to have gotten worse and she can tell when the redhead pauses while on top of her, closing her eyes so she doesn't have to look down at the body she knows has become the spitting image of Elisabet Sobeck, for good or ill. The Carja pretends not to see how badly it bothers Aloy, for her sake only, allowing her the small dignity of never voicing the redhead's fear for her.

It has never bothered Talanah.

"I know you aren't stupid, Tal. I know you see what I see," Aloy finally admits.  
  
Talanah's grip on her shoulders tightens, her forehead coming to rest against the redhead's.  
  
"I only see you."

Talanah can feel Aloy start to pull back from her and instead holds her steady.  
  
"But now that I...I look just like--"  
  
"I _only_ see you, and all the years we've lived," Talanah insists. 

"It's all her--"  
  
"By the Sun, Aloy, it's _you_ ," Talanah says. She backs up just enough so that they're face to face and she lifts her right hand, fingertips beginning to trace the redhead's features. She runs her hand along Aloy's hair.  
  
"Every strand of silver? That's another year we spent _together_."

Her fingers brush along the edges of Aloy's eyes. "This is from leaving the Sacred Land and living in the Sundom where you're always squinting against the light all the time."

Finally she traces the redhead's lips and the edges of her mouth.

"These laugh lines? I made those every time I told you some awful joke and you went along with it."

She pulls Aloy toward her by the chin, placing a deep kiss against her lips until she hears a small whimper escape the redhead. 

" _You_ put these paces on _your_ body. I should know. I helped," the dark-haired woman smirks. "Shadow take me if I ever stop."  
  
"This doesn't...bother you?" Aloy asks, her voice cracking.  
  
Talanah presses forward. "Do you think I would have spent the last twenty years of my life doing _this_ with you if it had?"  
  
"I was younger--"  
  
"And so was I," Talanah says simply. "We both look different now. All that means is we lived a life. And I thank the Sun everyday that I live it with you."  
  
"But I'm almost as old as--"  
  
"As everyone else who's ever made it to their mid-forties? Good. Means you're not dead," Talanah says, unwilling to let Aloy make the comparison she knows is on the tip of her tongue. She refuses to indulge it. She presses forward again, the two now skin to skin.  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
Talanah grins.  
  
"Finishing what I started."  
  
She kisses Aloy again, continuing with enough heat that soon, the redhead's lips part, the two unable to break away from each other. Talanah quickly discards her leggings and pushes forward until they are back where they started, the Carja reclaiming her perch atop the redhead's hips.   
  
"Now where was I?" Talanah teases, bending forward to kiss along the pulse in Aloy's neck.   
  
The redhead squirms beneath her, though from her own self consciousness or enjoyment, she can't tell.   
  
"You are _you_ , Aloy," the Carja breathes, tongue dragging along the other woman's throat. "And if I have to spend _all night_ proving that _your_ _face_ , _your_ _body_ is what I want, then I guess I just have no choice."  
  
Aloy chuckles softly beneath her, skin newly flushed and warm once again as she feels her mate breathe, tracing her features with her thumb.

"There she is."


End file.
